CONFLICT APPROACH 2

Conflict Approach

Whether in personal or professional life, conflict is inevitable. There are also many ways
that people use to deal with conflict. For me, there is really not much difference between the way
I approach conflict in either my personal or professional life. In both cases I just walk away from
it.
I like being in good terms with people around me. My desire to maintain cordial
relationship with colleagues, family, and friends makes me try as much as possible to avoid
conflicts with them. Whenever conflicts occur, rather than standing my ground I prefer walking
away or doing anything possible to show that there is really no conflict between us. I react in this
manner even when it is clear that it is me who has been wronged.
While this approach of avoiding conflict for fear of upsetting relationships has helped me
maintain relatively stable relationships for long, it is not the appropriate reaction to conflicts or
developing conflicts. To change from my current instincts of avoiding conflicts to tackling them,
I need first to change my attitude towards conflicts. Conflicts are normal in human relations.
Walking away from conflict situations does not solve anything, it just sweeps the problem under
the carpet. Thus, rather than avoiding conflict situations, it is important address any conflict that
arises and solve it successfully.
In future the way I plan to address conflicts both in my personal and professional life is to
talk about them with the other party. I will limit the talk to the event and behaviors that generated
the conflict rather than the personality of the other person or persons involved. I will give the
other party enough time to speak and carefully listen to what they have to say. From our talk we
will be able to establish points that we agree on and those that we do not. We can then discuss

CONFLICT APPROACH 3
and establish a plan of resolving the issues or points of disagreement and follow through it until
the conflict is successfully resolved.